This is a small wrapper around fetchzip. It allows you to say: src = fetchGitHub { owner = "NixOS"; repo = "nix"; rev = "924e19341a5ee488634bc9ce1ea9758ac496afc3"; # or a tag sha256 = "1ld1jc26wy0smkg63chvdzsppfw6zy1ykf3mmc50hkx397wcbl09"; };